‘San Seriffe’ baseball card to be released
You guys have heard of this famous old hoax from 1977, right?
Anybody familiar with even basic typography can immediately spot this as a hoax. Unfortunately, a lot of folks who saw this — part of an elaborate seven-page special section April Fool’s joke in the London Guardian, 32 years ago — were not familiar with typography. We wrote about it last October.
Our good pal Chris Olds tells us that San Serriffe will be part of a collectible card set featuring “the world’s biggest hoaxes, hoodwinks and bamboozles.” This set is, in turn, a subset of a baseball rookies and historic figures.
What do hoaxes have to do with baseball rookies — other than Sid Finch, perhaps? Darned if we know. But Chris knows. That’s why he now works for Beckett media, which publishes baseball card magazines and price guides.
The entire hoax set, according to Chris:
- GHHB1Â Â Â Charles Ponzi
- GHHB2Â Â Â Bernie Madoff
- GHHB3Â Â Â The Runaway Bride
- GHHB4Â Â Â Idaho
- GHHB5Â Â Â The Turk
- GHHB6Â Â Â Enron
- GHHB7Â Â Â Anna Anderson
- GHHB8Â Â Â Ferdinand Waldo Demara
- GHHB9Â Â Â San Serriffe
- GHHB10Â Â Â D.B. Cooper
- GHHB11Â Â Â Spaghetti Trees
- GHHB12Â Â Â Victor Lusting
- GHHB13Â Â Â The War of the Worlds
- GHHB14Â Â Â George Parker
- GHHB15Â Â Â The Bathtub Hoax
- GHHB16Â Â Â The Cottingley Fairies
- GHHB17Â Â Â James Reavis
- GHHB18Â Â Â The Piltdown Man
- GHHB19Â Â Â The Cardiff Giant
- GHHB20Â Â Â Cold Fusion
Find the sports collectibles blog to which Chris Olds currently contributes here. Find a nice Q&A we did with him during his Orlando Sentinel days here.